Excerpt from: Big Water
Published by Lyons & Burford, New York, NY
We thank Nick Lyons for use permission!

I hadn't touched it for months,
the water had long cleared itself, the plants
flourished and thickened,
and at the end of my room
seemed another room
pouring out light.
Daily the red oranda
came up for food, likewise
the bubble eye, ryunkin, black
dragon eye. But something began
to go wrong - quite suddenly
one of the buffalohead, though desparate
to feed, could not swim up
from the bottom,
and the great calico veiltail as I watched
capsized, and swam upside down
no matter what I did

to the beautiful water, changed it, warmed it, cooled it
measured out medicines
and salt, no matter how -
everything having failed,
and in the last extreme helpless -
I tried to cure it with light: dimmed

the aquarium, brightened it
to something like
morning, made it night again,
then morning again, then night . . . . ~John Engels

About John Engels

John Engels has taught English Literature at
St. Michaels's College in Winooski, Vermont for many years. He
is the author of five books of poetry, including The Homer
Mitchell Place, Vivaldi in Early Fall, and Weather-Fear, for
which he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He is recognized
as one of America's finest poets. He lives in Burlington, Vermont.